W. B. Yeats

The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.

All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay.

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

The years like great black oxen tread the world, And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind,

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.

And yet they speak what's blown into the mind; Deformed men's bodies are the mind's deformed.

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love;

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight

The friends that have it I do wrong When ever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.

I am of a country that is still mediaeval, and my head is full of the mediaeval myths.

The Irishman of all men is the most romantic; he is always dreaming of some ideal country.

Literature is the expression of the imagination, and the imagination is the voice of the soul.

I have believed in the soul and in the flesh.

The intellect is a great disturber of the peace.

My glory was I had such friends.

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;